Sunday, December 29, 2013

Day 19--- The start of our journey home!

Today we began our first stage of our journey home. We got up pretty early. Cassidy had an earache, but we gave her Tylenol and I had many people praying that she would have a pain free trip home. Unexpectedly, David was very nauseous and I don't need to go into details about the end result. I think he ate something that didn't quite agree with him the night before. He was a pretty miserable guy pretty much the whole day. Well... we went to the airport to take a domestic flight to Beijing. It was about a 3 hour flight and trying to entertain a little boy who can't sit still was a huge challenge, but after giving him my hand sanitizer, my bath and body works lotion, several wipes, Chapstick, crayons, and snacks, we made it. Believe it or not, Toby cleaned the tray in front of him for about half of the trip with my lotion and hand cleaner over and over and over again. I sure hope he keeps up the "clean freak" side of him when he arrives home...maybe he can teach that to the others...(:

We were picked up by a sweet man we had met with Todd a few weeks before and taken to hotel near the airport. We got to spend some good time with our dear friends, Todd and Dawn and family. What a HUGE blessing they have been to us on this trip. It's so hard to explain the immense gratitude we feel for them...they did so much for us and we are so thankful for all they did for us.

Luke had a highlight of the week. He got to play pool and ping pong with several pretty flight attendants from an Asian airline. They were all giggling at him and he was eating up all the attention. They asked him his age and he was wishing he was older than 16. haha

We were all anxious to go home so we headed to bed. The funny thing about our sleeping arrangements was that we all had one room, 2 small double beds, and 6 people. We started out with Bethany,Luke and Cassidy in one bed and David, Toby and me in the other, but it did not work. So we got really creative... Here is how we slept. Nauseous David and wiggleworm Toby slept in one bed...sweet Cassidy slept on a sleeping bag on the floor, and the two teens and their Mom slept in the other bed. Bethany and I had our heads at the top of the bed and Luke's head was on the end of the bed ..So basically I cuddled with his feet and legs at night to keep me warm because the blanket was way too small for a double bed. It was quite amusing as we laughed our heads off as we drifted asleep. We are so homesick!